


Late, late, late

by Shadow_Guardian_Anabiel



Series: Star/dust/ed [1]
Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I wrote this entire thing listening to go tonight from the mad ones, It made sense with him being the first dark mage, The Aaravos/ziard is implied but not stated in the fic, The original female character is ziard's sister, but maybe a determined ending?, which is also not stated in the fic oops, with no happy ending, ziard is the leader of elarion in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24899551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Guardian_Anabiel/pseuds/Shadow_Guardian_Anabiel
Summary: Aaravos runs back as soon as he hears, but it's too late already. And the lateness just keeps stretching out farther and father.
Relationships: Aaravos & Viren (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos & Ziard (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos and Original Female Character(s), Aaravos/Ziard (The Dragon Prince)
Series: Star/dust/ed [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1801732
Kudos: 7





	Late, late, late

_“You know, it would be fun to take a trip for a while, you know? We could leave Nessa in charge and ditch for a few months. Exploring, learning new spells, the works.”_

_“I’ve got to go to negotiations with the star clave, remember? And you’re figuring out that mess with the king of the dragons.”_

_“Yeah, you’re right. It’s a nice thought, though.”_

He wishes he had gone. He wishes he had told the stuffy (murderous) bastards at the star clave to shove it, flipped off Sol Regem, and gone on a cross-country trip. He wishes the king of the dragons had kept his word. (He wishes a lot of things, but not much changes.)

Aaravos glances over at the desk, tucked into the corner of the small room. There is a letter half finished sitting on it (he hasn’t been able to bring himself to read it-), a quill, a small belt with six primal stones slotted neatly into pockets (the dragon’s conditions had included leaving all sources of magic except the staff behind, they’d thought nothing of it-)

There is a knock at the door. Then another, then the knob turns, and Nessa walks in, holding _the_ staff (previously belonging to the _late_ Ziard) loosely in her hand. The little additions had disappeared (burnt away, like trees like flesh like _life_ -), leaving it plain and lifeless.

“Aaravos?” Nessa looks nervous. The tear tracks running down her cheeks are obvious, and her hair is in disarray. Distantly he feels horribly guilty-he has left Elarion completely to her in his grief, and she has been supporting it through her own. Ziard would never have expected she would need to know how to run a city yet, and Aaravos is the one who has helped Ziard with the largest variety of things, he should have been helping her-

_“What should we call it? Lux Maura is a very sunfire name, and frankly, that’s the last thing people want. So, any ideas of what to change it to?”_

_“No- well, maybe. It’s kind of personal. And somewhat emotional.”_

_“You know I won’t mock you for talking about important things, right? If it doesn’t work, then worst case scenario it’s the same as if you hadn’t told me at all.”_

_“My sister’s name was Elarion.”_

_“She died hiding you from assassin’s sent after you after your mom left the startouch elf clave, right?_

_“Yeah. I just-”_

_“Aaravos, darling, that’s not stupid. That’s kind of adorably sad. I’ll suggest it at the meeting later.”_

Nessa is staring at him in concern when he returns to the present. “Did you hear what I said?”

“… No.”

“I asked if you were ready to talk to Elarion about this. Or at least the council. Such a targeted attack, with so many involved groups, well… that’s the sort of thing people need to know about soon, and I need to know whether to tell them or if you will.”

At that, Aaravos looks up. “So many involved groups?”

She instantly gets a look on her face like she’s just made a huge mistake and is desperately trying to think of how to backtrack, but it’s a bit late for that.

“Nessa, tell me what you meant by that!” he is standing now, towering over her, and he feels magic becoming agitated around him, but he has to know-

“Well, it’s not totally clear how many groups actually knew that they were leading to this with their actions, but there were a lot of them.”

_“Which. Ones.”_

“The dragon king, and thus the rest of the dragons because they’re under his rule. Ziard,” Aaravos can’t help but flinch hearing his name. “and by extension Elarion, since he was the leader, and the extended network of those who’ve learned dark magic since he taught it first. The sunfire elves, because they’re the ones who wanted us out of here and ratted out the existence of dark magic. The moonshadow elves who worked as an intermediary for setting up the meeting. And possibly the startouch elves at the conclave. It’s unlikely to be chance that it happened while you were gone, but that was planned so long ago that anyone could have heard about it and planned using it.”

And something crumples- he hadn’t even thought of that it may have been discussed and known in advance by those other than Sol Regem-

_He walks through the halls of the startouch elves, the halls that his mother abandoned, taking him and Elarion with her, dragging them with her into danger (does he wish she hadn’t-). He arrives before the leader (a king? A chief? Aaravos didn’t pay attention to the man’s introduction), who looks condescendingly down from his throne (his high horse, made chair shaped) and begins to talk. Most of it is drivel, but Aaravos gets one thing from it._

_These elves have no idea that he’s related to the rise of dark magic. They don’t know he knows Ziard at all. It’s not too late to create an alliance that would be rejected over dark magic._

_He can use this._

Aaravos blinks. “I don’t think that the startouch elves knew. I don’t think they knew about my connection to Elarion at all.”

“Well that’s a relief, at least. Look, I realize that I came in here asking questions but… it’s ten at night. Go to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow. It’s not too late to fix the issues between us and the elves and dragons.”

Aaravos laughs bitterly. “Maybe not. But it’s too late for me to want to. It’s too late to save Ziard. And it’s just getting later.”

Nessa leaves, and he goes to bed.

_"Some of your students have managed to connect directly to an arcanum. Are you going to try?”_

_“And you’ve managed all of them, power glutton. But nah, I’m not planning on it.”_

_“Wh-why not? It would mean you wouldn’t rely on the primal stones.”_

_“Yeah, but the thing is about connecting to an object versus an arcanum, from what I’ve heard, is that it permanently severs the world into parts. One of six things, instead of a little bit of everything, a tiny slice of a whole world. I don’t want to give that up.”_

_“I don’t understand.”_

_“You’ve never not been connected to an arcanum, I wouldn’t expect you to. Besides,” and Ziard grins brightly. “It gives me an excuse to hold your hand and look at the sky.”_

_Aaravos learned too late that this was a mistake on Ziard’s part._

The next morning, they get to work rebuilding everything that has been broken. It doesn’t work everywhere (it’s too late for a perfect repair), but it’s better than yesterday. 

The morning after that, they receive a letter asking them to abandon their city for the other side of Xadia, please and thank you, ‘you and all humans are being driven out of this side of the continent and we’re recalling some elves and dragons to over here, and you’ll never talk to each other again.’

Aaravos leaves Elarion and his key and the staff that no longer causes so much pain to look at to travel to the heart of Xadia, to a council of elves and dragons, to try to put a stop to the whole mess, hoping it’s not too late.

The sunfire queen arrives four days after he does, saying that she made a detour. When asked what it was, she says that she stopped at the city Ziard was from (Aaravos tries his best to not betray his terror), drove the humans out of it, and reconquered it for the sunfire elves, leaving her daughter in charge. Aaravos lets her go for now but keeps a tight hold of that information and hopes Nessa is okay.

Sol Regem (satisfyingly blinded and no longer a king) shares that someone gave the staff and helped with the secret of magic for humans. As the council panics, Aaravos, takes a long sip of his drink. Then he throws the empty cup at the sunfire queen’s head.

In the chaos he gets away with it.

_He shows up to the sunfire king’s palace as a visiting startouch elf, as though he hadn’t lived in Lux Maura since he was seven. He accepts a glass of water, talks with the man._

_Then he uses the sunfire king’s hospitality to cover him in water, leaving him largely unable to use his abilities._

_Then Ziard and Nessa knocked over the water tower through a window and drenched the rest of the room. The king is killed in the following scuffle, a split-second too late getting out of the way of a revolutionary’s sword. All of the other elves are given a choice-submit to the new leadership of the city or leave within the month._

_Only thirty-three out of hundreds of sunfire elves stay._

The council disbands and Aaravos knows that he needs to act quickly (he can’t be too late to catch her). He follows the sunfire queen all the way back to Elarion (which she has dubbed ‘Lux Aurea’-his blood is boiling) and then consumes her magic for fuel on her balcony, in front of all her subjects. She dissolves into embers. He doesn’t feel bad about it.

The council finds this out quickly, of course, and pursue him to the startouch clave, where he is trapped by the clave members, too late in getting out again.

He kills them all trying to get out, but he is too late in trying to get out, trapped permanently in a pocked dimension, a mirror. It is placed in the home of the new dragon king and queen, where it stays for an eternity.

But then it is moved, across the border, to the human kingdom of Katolis, by a dark mage. He hasn’t quite figured out how to use it, but Aaravos has nothing but time. The mage will figure it out. As he wears through more and more enchantments, Aaravos can see him better. He looks familiar.

It’s only months later that he realized that this human must be descended from Nessa. He has eyes like hers and some of her mannerisms.

And _Ziard’s_ staff.

He brings a moonshadow elf who calls either the mirror prison or Aaravos’s existence a fate worse than death. The elf is sealed into a coin.

The mage doesn’t do the ritual he is offered, but he’ll be back. After all, it’s far too late for him to give up the power Aaravos offers.

_It is raining when Aaravos arrives at a city, and past midnight. He had planned on collapsing under a roof cover in an alley, but the architecture here doesn’t look like it offers any unused cover._

_Shoot._

_Then he hears a surprised cry from behind him. He turns and it is a human boy, about his age, holding a wooden bucket._

_“What are you doing outside? It’s_ raining!” _he says, apparently unaware that he, too, is outside. “You can come stay with mom and Nessie and I if you can’t make it where you’re going, until the rain stops-” the boy stops dead when he gets a glance of Aaravos’s face (currently mostly purple, with some darker blue and a few spots of near-yellow) and then says softly, “oh, wow.”_

_That was not the expected reaction. Aaravos takes a moment to ponder the lack of hate, anger, or fear, then passes out from the cold._

_When he comes to, he is laying in a bed and the boy and a smaller girl with hair that reminds him of caramel are sitting by the bedside. “Who are you?” she asks._

_“I am Aaravos.”_

_The siblings grin and Aaravos can’t help but grin back._

The mage returns and Aaravos establishes a link between the two sides of the mirror. He is somewhat bad at rolling with the punches, but that can be fixed.

“Who are you?”

“How long I have waited to hear the sound of another voice. How may I serve you?”

A smirk.

He doesn’t answer the question, not really. He doesn’t need to.

He’ll get what he wants, one way or the other.

After all, he is Elarion’s midnight star.

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to 'go tonight' and was immediately reminded of some thoughts I'd had about Aaravos and how he must have felt after Ziard died. Then it became 2k words.   
> I'm thinking of making a couple of things to go along with it, something about Aaravos and Ziard's relationship, how Ziard sees magic, why the ability to connect to an arcanum was lost, how it went from lux maura to elarion to lux aurea, the rest of Nessa's life, etc. I'm sure all of this will be proved totally false in season four but i'm enjoying it while I can.


End file.
